John Feehery: Speaking Engagements

Beware of Your Friends

Posted on February 28, 2010

I read an interesting front-page story in the New York Times about efforts by the pro-life movement to gain converts in the African-American community. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/us/27race.html?scp=1&sq=abortion%20blacks&st=cse) As the story related, “Across the country, the anti-abortion movement, long viewed as almost exclusively white and Republican, is turning its attention to African-Americans and encouraging black abortion opponents across the country to become more active.

A new documentary, written and directed by Mark Crutcher, a white abortion opponent in Denton, Tex., meticulously traces what it says are connections among slavery, Nazi-style eugenics, birth control and abortion, and is being regularly screened by black organizations.”

The campaign has been a success. With relatively small amount of money, according to the Times, the pro-life movement is making tremendous strides in the black community. “What’s giving it momentum is blacks are finally figuring out what’s going down,” said Johnny M. Hunter, a black pastor and longtime abortion opponent in Fayetteville, N.C. “The game changes when blacks get involved. And in the pro-life movement, a lot of the groups that have been ignored for years, they’re now getting galvanized,” the Times reports.

Perhaps it is finally dawning on the black community that the liberals who so often proclaim that they are looking out for their interests maybe are not so altruistic. Why is it that Planned Parenthood is usually located in the poorest communities? Why is it that when you really probe with a pro-choicer why they want to make abortion more readily available, they will inevitably bring up the idea that there shouldn’t be so many unwanted black babies out there?

Liberals talk a good game about helping poor, black communities, but what do they really do for them? Does the media, which is dominated by the liberal community, give adequate coverage to the daily bloodbath on our city streets or does it only really cover those stories when they involve a white person?

Do the efforts by liberals to battle the police, to push for criminal rights, to legalize drugs, to take the side of the lawbreakers over the law enforcers, make the streets of our cities safer? Has it helped stop the crime in our most at-risk communities?

When the liberals push to give the unions more power over city schools, does that really help the kids learn? Has it made the schools better?

When liberals push for affirmative action programs, what are they really saying about the ability of blacks to compete? When they say that we should get rid of tests because the tests discriminate against blacks, what are they really saying?

When liberals in Congress (and the President) say that Washington D.C. should stop giving opportunity scholarships to black kids who want the chance to go to schools that aren’t disastrous, are they really looking out for the well-being of those kids who just want a chance to succeed?

Democrats and liberals don’t hesitate to accuse Republicans and conservatives of racism at the drop of a hat. And they have been successful in keeping African Americans from voting for the GOP or for conservative candidates.

But the black community should reconsider. Who has been pushing for policies that make it easier for black babies to be aborted, for policies that have made the black community less safe from crime, for policies that made inner-city schools uniformly terrible, and for policies that state up-front that African-Americans need special breaks in order to compete in academia and in the workplace?